Social Psychology Midterm 1

Mischel's Challenge

Term: The evidence for consistency of a unique person across different situations is very low. Rather, suggests that we focus on consistency across time in a unique situational context. -> r < 0.30 ex: kid who cheats on exam not necessarily going to cheat when playing sports.

Schema Accessibility

Term: The extent to which schemas are at the forefront of people's minds. Could be chronically accessible (because of past experience), related to current goals (ex: preparing for an abnormal psyc final -> view everyone as mentally ill) or to recent experiences (ex: was reading a book right before the event).

Minority Influence

Term: The key to minority influence is consistency. Minorities must express consistent view and play on informational social influence, whereas he majority can exert the power of normative social influence.

Deindividualization

Term: The loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people can't be identified (= mob mentality). Makes people feel less accountable for their acts. ex: KKK on the verge of hanging a man, child recognizes one of the agressors: all stopped. Increases obedience to group norms, so that they become stronger than social norms. Online, anonymity disinhibits people's comments.

Diffusion of Responsibility

Term: The more people witness an emergency, the less likely it is that any given individual will intervene. Kathy Genovese example: 38 witnesses, killed in a 45-minutes long attack, yet no one reacted.

Yale Story - Evidence of Subjectivism

Term: The reaction of the students depended on how they construed the e-mail. Wife of house-master probably didn't mean to be offensive, saw it from another perspective.

Social Psychology

Term: The scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people, and by the entire social situation.

Social Psychology's Goals

Term: The social psychologist attempts to understand, explain, predict and control people's behavior. Usually, they are good at understanding and explaining behavior, but still can't accurately predict and control it.

Social Perception

Term: The study of how we form impressions of other people and how we make inferences about them.

Social Loafing

Term: The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable. Then, individuals perform worse on simple tasks and better on complex tasks than if they were subject to evaluation apprehension.

Sports - Evidence of Situationism

Term: Sampras won 14 grand slams but never French open because ball slows down on clay: surface matters and is most likely the reason, rather than a dispositional factor. Homeruns record broken: most likely due to bad pitchers and man on steroids.

Social Perception vs Social Cognition

Term: Social perception: "what do you think about someone, why is he acting the way you see?" vs social cognition: "when you are thinking about someone, what does that do to you?"

Milgram Study Methodological Criticism

Term: Some critics claimed that the subjects might not have believed the scenario and understood that no one was actually being shocked. Counter-example: study with a dog, asked to learn unsolvable sequence of lights, given real shocks. 77% obedience rate (!). Others claimed that the prompts are insufficient to produce the effects.

Positive Illusion Caveat

Term: Sometimes, people are so bad they don't know what a good performance is. This might lead them to naively rate themselves above average (ex: math). Could come from inaccurate feedback. Resolution: If they become better, people have a better visualization of where they stand. On the other hand, some people are so good they don't realize it.

Social Psyc. vs Sociology

Term: Study of the individual in the context of a social situation as opposed to the study of the group or society at large. Allows to establish general claims about all human beings.

Self-Monitoring Test

Term: Subjects asked to draw a capital E on their forehead. Prediction: majority of low self-monitors will draw read so that they can read it (facing them), and majority of high self-monitors will draw it so that others can read it.

Milgram Study Conformity to Wrong Norm

Term: Subjects start by obeying to the experimenter because he is an authority and seems confident. As he situation degenerates, 3 factors keep the subjects from switching norms: they are kept busy all the time, they engage in self-justification as a consequence of the incremental progression, and they develop moral disengagement (= loss of personal responsibility).

Field Experiments

Term: Subset of experimental studies which are conducted in natural settings, with unaware subjects. Leads to external validity but makes it harder to control for other variables. Can't randomly assign to control or experimental condition. Example: shop-lifting, could be that people who shop alone are more likely to react than those who come in group.

Archival Analysis

Term: Subset of the observational method in which researchers examine accumulated archives of a culture. Example: examined millions of twitter posts, noticed that people's mood peaked positively right before and after bed.

Ethnography

Term: Subset of the observational method in which researchers observe a group from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notion they might have. Example: Festinger joined group of believers in end of the world as prophecy was disconfirmed. Leader double down on her beliefs, stating that Earth was spared due to the Seeker's faith. Led to formulation of cognitive dissonance.

Barnum Effect

Term: Tendency for people to view generic personality tests as representative of their own personality traits.

Self-Serving Attributions

Term: Tendency for the explanation for one's successes to be internal and explanation for one's failures to be external. Variations: (sports) more experienced athletes are less susceptible to self-serving attributions, but solo athletes make more of them because their moral is essential.

Belief Perseverance

Term: Tendency to stick with initial judgement, even in the face of new information that should promt us to reconsider. Thus, best way to make lasting positive impression is to start off on the right foot (handshake, opening moment of speech...)

Bias Blind-Spot

Term: Tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attirbutional bias than we are. Evidence: given list of "attributional tendencies", asked for self-susceptibility vs others' susceptibility. Results: Clearly, people thought self was better than average.

Schemas and Culture

Term: The contents of our schemas are influenced by the culture in which we live. ex: cattle transaction presented to scottish setler and settler from swatzillan: latter remember every detail without taking any note, as opposed to former.

Social Influence

Term: The effect that the words, actions or presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behavior.

Interactionism

Term: Resolution to conflict between dispositional and situational factors: both matter. BUT the emphasis is on the fact that everyone knows that person matters, need to convey the importance of the situation.

Tap-Song Study

Study: Subjects ask to tap a song, other subject should recgonize it without having access to the list. Predicted success rate: 50%; actual success rate: 2.5%

College Bowl Study

Study (Ross): People randomly assigned to be questioners or contestants. Questioner gets to choose 10 very hard questions specific to his own knowledge, then give them to the contestant. After game, questioner and contestant asked to assess self and other's general knowledge relative to average (percentile score). Results: Questioners ranked both themselves and contestants as average; contestants ranked themselves below average and questioners well above average. + When external observer asked to rate general knowledge, gap was even more salient: very high rating for questioner.

Norm Deviation Study

Study (Schachter) Subjects read and discuss the case study of a delinquant. One confederate takes extreme position whereas all other subjects are middle-of-the-road. Results: confederate becomes the center of communitcaiotn, then ignored and punished by group: when told to exclude one participant, subjects chose him; task repartition: gave hime the most boring tasks.

Primacy Effect Study

Study: (Ash) Subjects given list of identical words but randomly sorted to get one of two orderings. Then asked to emit impressions about depicted person. Results: Subjects formed more or less positive impressions of the same list of attributes depending on the order in which they were presented. Thus, the 1st traits we perceive in others influence how we process information that we learn about them later.

Opinion Through Essay Study

Study: (Jones) Subjects given essay for or against Castro in Cuba to read, told that written either by (1) student who was free to choose his stance or (2) student who was assigned a position. Serves as an early piece of evidence for the FAE. Results: In both situations, subjects made internal attributions, claiming that the subject believed in what he wrote (although effect less significant in (2)). Critics: Some scientists criticized the rating scale to influence the responses. Resolution: replicated study with only yes/no answer. Got the same results (!).

Conformity and Culture Study

Study: (Milgram) Wanted to give subjects a significant task in response to Ash's experiment. Ask participants to judge tones used in an airline emergency system, with Conformist norvegians and independent minded french. Results: the French subjects conformed less than the Norvegians.

Autokinetic Effect Study

Study: (Sherif) Subjects are put alone in a dark room, with a fixed dot of light on the wall. Ambiguous situation: the dot seems to move because of optical illusion. In 1st phase, all subjects arrive at consistent estimate. Then, 2nd phase, put in room with other subjects: all arrive at a consensus, using each other as a source of information. Thus people rely on each other to define reality. Variation: when a confederate was present and giving specific estimates, the subjects followed. Results were still evident a year later (!).

Biased Assimilation Study

Study: (Similar to confirmation bias) Subjects who already had a stance presented with evidence either in favor or against death penalty. Results: People became more confident in their beliefs (!!). Reason: accepted at face-value evidence in their side and subjected to extreme critics evidence against their side. /!\ There is a logical fallacy: subjects should not take wrong opposition as a means to strengthen their own confidence.

Coackroaches Study

Study: (Zajonc) Coackroaches given either easy task (run straight line) or complex task (take an angle turn), either in presence or not of other coackroaches. Results: mere presence was sufficient to improve performance on easy tasks and undermine performance on complex task. Thus evaluation apprehension is not necessary for social facilitation.

Deindividualization Studies

Study: (Zimbardo) Dressed subjects with KKK uniforms or didn't: former subjects delivered significantly stronger shocks than did the control subjects. (GIlovich) Black uniforms provoke more agression. ex: football team changed their color to black, increased rate of agression. Also could be that referees are more likely to penalize black uniforms. (Gergen) When subjects are put in a dark room, they start to get amorous, even as perfect strangers. Thus darkness acts as deindividualization factors and disinhibits people's behavior.

Stanford Prison Experiment

Study: (Zimbardo) Highlights the power of social roles. Subjects randomly assigned to be either prisoners or guards. Prisoners became passive and docile, guards abusive. Had to call out the experiment after 6 days: active people became zombie like prisoners and were undergoing extreme stress reactions. Thus situations can bring up the good and bad side in anyone. + Social Roles are often more efficient than simple injunctive norms: be a voter vs how important is it for you to vote -> people react more strongl to the former.

Expectancy Effect on I.Q. Study

Study: 1st graders given a fake test, then separated in 2 groups: bloomers and non-bloomers, in a list given to the teacher. Results: A year later, bloomers were shown to have undergone a significatnly greater IQ gain. Reasons: more encouragement and personal attention / more, harder problems / more, better feedback / more opportunities to participate in class. /!\ Effects only significant when study led on 1st and 2nd graders. After that, kids have form self-assessement + are more influenced by peers. Fun: effects on 1st graders lasted for 10 years (!).

Cali Energy Consumption Study

Study: 2 groups were given advice concerning energy consumption: either above or below average. At random, either descriptive norm condition (told about neighbors) or descriptive + injunctive (also given happy/sad smilay if above/below average). Result: boomerang effect on below average in descriptive norm condition; positive effect on above average. BUT descriptive + injunctive: uniformly succesful.

Behavioral Confirmation Study

Study: 2 subjects, a man and a woman who have never seen each other, engage in a conversation. The man receives the picture of either an attractive or unattractive female, which he is told is that of the woman he is talking to. Then, judges get to listen to the woman's side of the conversation only. Results: Judges give the woman high ratings on positive traits usually associated with attractiveness ~ self-fulfilling prophecy.

Milgram Study Normative & Informational Influence

Term: - Normative influence: the experimenter actively insists that the subjects conform. - Informational Influence: all is there: crisis, ambiguity, presence of authority.

Truck Conflict Study

Study: 2 truck companies have to get trucks from one point to the next. Given 60 cents, lose 1 cent per second. Shortcut can only be taken by 1 truck at a time. Solution: take turns in cutting shortcut. BUT when one side has blocking gate: both sides lost more, and when both sides had gates: terrible results.

Job Roles Study

Study: Alternative of the college-bowl study. Subjects randomly assigned to be either managers or clerks. Then, asked to rate traits of team-members. Results: Managers scored highr than clerks. Thus, arbitrarily dividing people makes real differences in the perception of traits. Social roles matter.

Holistic vs Anaytic Style Evidence

Study: Americans and Japanese subjects shown picture of fish in two different backgrounds, then asked whether the fish was the same. Results: Americans were not affected by the change of background, but Japanese respondents wer higly affected.

Dating Partners Study

Study: Arranged conversation between female subject and (1) attractive male or (2) unattractive male with either traditional or untraditional views. Results: In virtual presence of attractive male, women shifted their views toward the orientation of the male. + After questionaire, given cognitive test. If the woman was presented to the desirable and traditional man, she scored lower (!) ~ normative influence.

Evidence for Construal Effect - War Resolution

Study: Asked pro-israeli and pro-palestinians to write peace proposals; then, changed the side of the author and presented the arguments to the side opposite to the one indicated on the letter. Significantly affected how hostile the receivers were to the proposition.

Energy Conservation Study

Study: California households given one of four messages: protect the env. / benefit society / save money / majority of neighbors conserve energy. The 4th message was the most likely to induce people to conserve energy. + People often deny normative conformity: most of the subjects claimed that the neighbors argument would have the least effect, and protect environment would be the most effective.

Hong-Kong Study - FAE Across Cultures

Study: College students from Hong-kong first shown pictures of either (a) American culture, (b) Chinese culture of (c) unrelated pictures. Then shown fish in foreground with school of fish in the background, and asked to interpret situation: is fish leading others (dispositional attribution) or chased by others (situational attribution)? Results: American: 15% situational; no priming: 30% situational; Chinese priming: 50% situational (!).

Littering Experiment

Study: Confederate either drops bag or picks up bag (descriptive vs injunctive). Both happen either in clean or non-clean environment. Results: In control, envrionment didn't matter (!). In descriptive, if environment dirty, many people dropped flyer; if environment clean, few did. In injective, few dropped the flyer no matter context. Thus there must be both descriptive norms and suitable environment to encourage deviant behavior from injunctive norms.

Gay-Marriage Study

Study: Controversial study. Claim: if gay people talk to random subjects about same-sex marriage, should have long-lasting impact on people's attitude. Problem: replication failure, most subjects refused to interact and changes were way less noticeable. Turns out researchers lied: didn't receive research funds, didn't hire survey firm.

Howard Beach Study

Study: Evidence for Naive Realism. Took liberal and conservative statements from NYTimes Howard Beach study. Liberals were more sympathetic to black victim, conservatives more sympatethic to white perpetrators. Then self-identified liberals and conservatives asked for predictions. Results: both sides predicted extreme differences, much larger than actual averages, and rated themselves as the moderate conservative/liberal. /!\ Most misperceived: conservative, ot a single conservative predicted the correct average for conservatives. + Origin of evidence: themselves - actual evidence; others - political ideology. Thus, participants overestimate differences in construal and miss opportunities to discover common groundS.

FAE Evidence - Milgram Semi-Replication

Study: Exprimenter put subject in front of choc generator and described the situation of Milgram's study on obedience to authority. Then asked subjects whether they would obey were they to be put in that situation. Results: 90% of subjects answered no, they wouldn't obey. Thus, people just don't get the situation, perhaps due to perceptual salience or a failure to acknowledge for the effects of construals.

Influence of Feelings - Facebook Study

Study: Facebook manipulated a huge sample of profiles to have access to either a timeline composed of negative posts or positive posts. Results: (counter-intuitive) People who were exposed to positive posts tended to post positive things as well.

Facebook Voting Experiment

Study: Facebook sent either an informational or a social message about voting ("I voted" button or info about 6 friends who have voted + pictures). Results: informational message as effective as control; social message very powerful in getting people to vote.

Elevator Conformity Study

Study: Field experiment. Subjects enter elevator where 3 confederates are facing the same, non-traditional direction. Most subjects conform: it is hard to resist the influence of others. But if one confederate doesn't conform, most of the sibjects remained unaffected. + Indirect influence: college student looking up / three students line up at entrance of library.

Schema Priming

Study: First, subjects given a list of words to memorize while identifying colors (distraction). Then, presented with the profile of a man, and asked to give their impressions about him. Results: If the words in the first "unrelated" study were adventurous, persistent and the likes, subject were positively impressed by the man; BUT if the words were stubborn, conceited and the likes, subjects had a negative impression. Thus by priming different sets of words experimenters influenced the schemas that people used to form an impression. /!\ Only works if the words are both accessible and applicable (need to be related to the man's story).

Evidence for Automatic Goal Pursuit

Study: In a first "independent" part, subjects given words to form sentences; either neutral or related to God. Then, 2nd part, subjects given 10$ and asked to distribute betwen themselves and other invisible participant. Results: subjecst exposed to words about god were much more generous (also worked with altruism words) Thus, goals can be unconsciously activated and subsequently influence people's behavior.

Ash Line Judgement Study

Study: In response to Sherif's autokinetic effect, Ash thought that when faced with unambiguous situation, people would be rational and resist social pressures. 8 participants, 7 confederates; shown three lines next to one, asked which one is closed to the single line. On critical trials, confederates all give wrong answer. Results: 76% of subjects conformed at least once to critical trials. On average, conformed to 33% of the critical trials.

Truck Conflict + Communication Study

Study: In truck study, when sides were allowed to communicate and one side had gate, only slightly increased profits: used communication to threaten other rather than organize their moves. BUT when first told to communicate, led to better earnings.

Commons Dilemma

Study: Instance of social dilemma. Everyone allowed to graze their cows, but if one overgrazes everyone looses. Social dilemma general consensus: defect > coop., BUT mutual defect < mutual coop. People still defect, either because greedy, don't want to coop when others are defecting, or are newcomers (hard to make them conform).

Power of Conformity - Fast-food Accident

Study: Man calls McDonald's manager, presents himself as police detective, accuses one of the employees of stealing money. Slowly, leads manager and husband to commit sexual acts on employee by giving incremental instructions. Criminal was a prison guard, knew how to exert authority role; declared non-guilty. But manager and wife declared guilty, 5 years in prison.

Influence of Behavior - Political Elections

Study: Obama hired team of social psyc to help him with the elections. The main goal of a political campaign is not to persuade voters to change their opinion; rather, the goal is to get people to show up on vote day, because it is extremely hard to change people's minds.

Need to Feel Good Evidence

Study: People asked to rate themselves on positive traits. Given an average that actually corresponds to their own responses from weeks ago. Results: people answered above average. + People are often prone to positive illusions (ex: 90% of people think they're better drivers than average).

Miscalibration Study

Study: People asked to write a joke and estimate its quality (11 point scale). The bottom quartile tended to estimate a 60% percentile, so largely overestimated quality; top quartile slightly underestimated quality (75% vs 90%).

They Saw a Game Study

Study: People from two opponent teams looked at a brutal football game; everybody saw the same game but construed differently by fans of each team. Thus even with the same stimulus, 2 sides might be biased.

Selection Task - Evidence of Miscalibration

Study: People given the selection task (most of the people were wrong). Bad scorers thought they were much better than they actually are. BUT after being given a lesson and re-taking the test, they yield better calibration because they received accurate feedback.

Availability Heuristic and Self-Assessement

Study: People were asked to either come up with (1) 6 or (2) 12 times when they acted assertively. Results: Subjects in (1) reported themselves as more assertive than subjects in (2). Also applies to external judgements: want a couse to be good? ask for 12 ways to improve it.

FAE Community vs Wall Street Experiment

Study: RAs asked to select students they considered competitive and students they considered collaborative. Split each group in half, one half given a version of the prisonner's dilemma called the Wall-street game, other half given the Community game. Results: no matter the initial RA attribution, people playing wall-street were predominantly competitive and people playing community were mostly collaborating. Thus, seemingly minor aspects of the situation can overwhelm the differences in people's personalities.

What a Pain Modern Milgram Replication

Study: Reality show, presented as a game. Some subjects refuse to even participate, and some stop at first scream. Results: 3 of 6 participants stll went all the way to the end.

FAE Rosa Park Study

Study: Rosa Park memorial day, people asked ot not sit in the front sit. Some did, found out why: - when asked the people at fault, most made external attribution (= "didn't see the sign"). - when asked other riders, most made internal attributions: the people at fault are willingly going against the rule.

Evidence for Reactance: Prof/Student Study

Study: Student engages in research with professor. End of summer, publisher says "this chapter will be published + royalty of 5000$". Student isn't author and doesn't receive money, complains. Then, either professor offers money or authorship. Results: In both cases, participants who receive X say they would have preferred Y. /!\ With a bad professor, the reactive devaluation was even stronger, BUT still significant with good professor.

Evidence for Influence of Schemas

Study: Students given description of professor with one variation: some got warm, practical, industrious, determined, and other got cold, practical, ... Then asked to rate professor: warm expectations led to significantly higher ratings and more participation. Thus, students applied their preexisting schemas to apprehend the performance of the professor. /!\ Situation must be ambiguous: if professor sarcastic, results were not observed.

Minority vs White Feedback Effect

Study: Students given either unbuffered criticism, or (1) honest feedback (involving high-standards and assurance) / (2) positive feedback accompanying the criticism. If unbuffered criticism, black students reacted more negatively than white students because of attributional ambiguity; BUT if honest feedback w/ high-standards and assurance, both white and minority students reacted similarly. Thus having high-standards and assuring they can meet them is the best way to motivate minority students.

Suffering and Self-Justification Study

Study: Students put in identical conditions while pledging a fraternity, except that the level of hazing varied. Results: the more unpleasant the process, the more the students liked their fraternity. Humans are willing to do paradoxical things in order to maintain a positive picture of themselves.

Priming / Roles Effects on Performance

Study: Subjects are assigned at random to spend a day in the life of a professor or a secretary. They are then given a trivial quiz. Results: Subjects who were assigned to be professors scored higher. BUT secretary schema led to faster performance.

Power Posing Study

Study: Subjects asked to hold either high-power or low-power nonverbal body postures. Then, they felt more powerful as they adopted riskier strategies in a gambling task; also experience a surge in testosterone (!). Thus, you can use your own body language to shape how you think, act and feel.

Violent Porn Study

Study: Subjects first angered by a woman. Then shown one of 3 videos, either violent porn, normal porn or control (talk-show). In seemingly unrelated study, given opportunity to give electric shock. Results: violent porn subject gave significantly highr levels of shocks. Thus watching violent porn causes increased aggression.

Realtive vs Absolute Line-Drawing Study

Study: Subjects from America and Japan presented with a stimulus (box containing a white line). Then, asked to go to the other side of the room, with a new frame, and to reproduce the line either (1) relative to the size of the new frame or (2) in absolute distance. Results: Japanese subjects were better at the relative task (1) and Americans were better at the absolute task (2). + /!\ Americans in Japanese exhibited Japanese-like results: culture influences processing of the environment.

Env. Influence Over Holistic / Analytic Thinking

Study: Subjects from Japan and America shown pictures of either American or Japanese cities, and asked to imagine they were in the scene. Then, shown airport images with both background and foreground differences. Results: Subjects' responses depended on which city they were first exposed to.

Jefferson vs Lenin Quote Study

Study: Subjects given an identical quote, but half randomly selected told that quote by Jefferson, and other half told quote by Lenin. Results: People from the former group interpreted the quote as being a good thing, and people from the latter saw it as source of dangerous anarchy. Thus people can construe the same info very differently if they think it comes from different sources.

Expectancy Rat Study

Study: Subjects given rats, told at random that they were maze-smart or maze-dumb. Results: "smart" rats ended up performing better than "dumb" rats when put in a maze (!!!).

Ash Politician Study

Study: Subjects given sample ranking of 10 most useful profession, either with Politician as n°1 or n°10. Then asked to rank the professions themselves. Results: people exposed to rankings with politician n°1 ranked them much higher, and imagine famous leaders as opposed to local politicians in other condition. Thus the meaning of terms itself can be shaped by simple manipulations.

Seizure Study for Bystander Effect

Study: Subjects participate in a blind chat with either one, three or four other participants, all confederates. One of the confederates simulates a seizure. The more participants are in the discussion, the less likely the subject was to react and do something. Here, independent variable: # of participants, and dependent variable: percentage of subjects who reacted.

Mere Presence Study

Study: Subjects put in room, either with sensory deprived subject or alone. Given simple vs complex task. Results: social faciliation was still observed in presence of another person who was not paying attention.

Free-Will Study

Study: Subjects randomly assigned to read lines either for or against free-will. Then, given GRE questions, scored their own tests, and got a dollar for every correct answer. Results: People cheated significantly more when they read statements against the existence of free-will. Thus, in society's best interest, we all should believe in free-will. + We tend to think that others' actions are more predetermined than our own.

Hostile Media Bias Study

Study: Subjects shown Arab-Israeli crisis' news coverage; asked pro-arabs and pro-israeli about overall treatment of israeli. Results: Huge gap in pro-arabs vs pro-israeli responses, with absolutely no overlap.

Informational Social Influence and Lineups

Study: Subjects shown perpetrator in a lineup vry briefly, and dressed differently in two slides. Answer with 3 confederates, either high importance (money and reference for future anwers) or low importance. Results: on critical trials, both high and low importance conformed to wrong answers, but more so in high importance condition. Other evidence: subjects shown two slightly different clips, then allowed to discuss before quizz. Results: 71% of subjects cited info only present in other subject's clip (!).

Thin-Slicing Prof Review Study

Study: Subjects were shown 10 second clips from 12 instructors in silent-mode. Participants were then asked to rate the professors on several criteria. Results: There was a strong correlatoin between 10-s impressions and end of semester ratings + Also worked with 6 seconds exposure (!).

Perceptual Salience Study

Study: Two confederates engage in a conversation, and 6 subjects around them watch: 2 look at both, and 2-2 face each one of the confederates. Results: The subjects who could see one person better designated this person as being the leader. Police Interrogation, either see (a) the victim only, (b) the investigator only or (c) both. Results: subjects who were shown the victim only determined that he was more guilty.

Effects of Environment on Food Consumption

Study: Two groups. First group given small plates, small serving spoons, fruits were put before pasta in self-service area, glasses were tall and narrow. Second group given opposite. Results: Second group ate 56% more food and filled their wide glasses all the way to the top, whereas tall glasses where only filled halfway.

Process Loss - Unique Info Study

Study: When 4 subjects were separately given the same positive arguments and 2 unique different arguments concerning a candidate, few groups ended up deciding to chose that candidate, despite there being twice as many positive arguments as there were negative arguments. Thus groups tend to focus on the info they have in common rather than sharing their unique info. Resolution: Could have longer discussion, avoid declaring preference at the beginning, or using transactive memory (= each member in charge of a specific area).

Negative Conformity Examples

Term: In Vietnam, soldiers started shooting innocent villagers because one of them launched the assault (informational social influence). In Abu Ghraib, soldiers humiliated Iraqi captives due to a severe lack of info.

Reactive Devaluation Resolution

Term: 1 - When people asked to write about their own values (= self-affirmation), it eliminated reactive devaluation. BUT reward was still as important, and only eliminated if people asked to reflect about general values (= general affirmation). 2 - Legalization of Marijuana conflict. Confederate either makes proposal, or acknowledges opponent's side by saying "I'll make a new proposal", then gives the same one. Results: second approach more likely to end in agreement, because the subjects like the person better.

Ash Study Variations

Term: - A majority of 3 confederates is enough to produce normative social influence; BUT with only one dissenter, subjects stop conforming. - When asked to write down answer, lower but still significant conformity rate due to fear of having to say answers out loud later. - In collectivistic cultures, higher conformity rates iff other confederates are members of the subject's in group. Else, lower conformity. - Distance between participants doesn't matter: even in 4 isolated carrels, with automatic answers, we still get conformity results. - Recent replication: smaller but still high conformity rate (60%); might be due to smaller sample.

Informational Influence Settings

Term: - Ambiguous situation; when unsure of the correct response, people are most open to the influence of others. - Crisis: when there is no time to stop and think about which course of action is best, people pay attention to others' response and imitate it. Example: vietnam slaughter / halloween radio War of the Worlds broadcast due to presence of multiple listeners. - Experts: The more expertise a person has, the more valuable he/she will be as a guide in an ambiguous situation. However, experts are not always right (ex: war of the worlds incident, even policemen believed in the story).

Source of Bias

Term: - Cognitive Source: People rely on their already established schemas and are unwilling to think hard about things. - Motivational Pressure: cognitive dissonance keeps people from recognizing that the other side has merit. + From the start, perceivers are not moderate, so they are prey to naive realism.

Increasing Cooperation

Term: - Communication / the introduction of a third party / imposing sanctions and incentives / social norms can all lead to increased cooperation.

Personality Psyc. Arguments

Term: - Consistency across time, weak correlation; - Aggregated measurements: take a lot of measurements in one domain, then predict behavior in another setting. Problem: takes time, useless for one(time prediction. - Criterion can change: physical agression does not imply physical agressiveness in playfield Problem: There is no limit to generalization. - Consistency might only apply to certain traits - Some people are more consistent than others: = self-monitoring (high self-monitors do what the situation calls for, and low self-monitors don't differ across situations: more likely to have consistent traits).

Culture-Specific Nonverbal Cues

Term: - Eye-contact and gaze: necessary in America, invasive elsewhere - Personal space: essential in America, encouraged for non-creepiness elsewhere - Emblems (well understood defs within a given culture) are not universal.

Covariation Model Case Analysis

Term: - Low consensus, lows distinctiveness, high consistency: blame the actor; - High consensus, high distinctiveness, high consistency: blame the target; - Low consistency: blame the situation. Problem: people rely more on consistency and distinctiveness than they rely on consensys, and they make guesses when missing data.

Limits of Negative Acknowledgment

Term: - Might trigger boomerang effect in some cases - Warning must be given before exposure - Not every negative feeling can be tempered by negative acknowledgment.

Self-Serving Attributions Reasons

Term: - Motivation to maintain self-esteem, most likely when we think we can't improve or when we present ourselves to others; + Low to absent in Asian cultures because internal attributions trigger compassion and thus strenghten the group. - Just-World Belief: assumption that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. + More prevalent in cultures with extremes of wealth and poverty, because need to repeatedly justify misery all around them. ex: rape, likely to make internal attribution: what did she do? rather than "it could happen to anyone".

Reactive Devaluation

Term: In a conflict, if a side makes a proposal, it is instantly devaluated relative to other potential proposals.

Milgram Study Modern Modifications

Term: - Participants were stopped once they reached the 150 volt threshold, reasonnable cut because mst of the subjects who went past it went all the way to the end. + Subjects were all prescreened by a clinical psychologist, which slightly affects external validity but was necessary to avoid permanent damage. Results: still obtained 70% obedience (= got to 150 volts and ready to continue).

Milgram Study Ethical Criticism

Term: - Subjects had no informed consent, and they did not have an adequate debriefing at first. - They were imprisoned in the situation, impossible today: in recent replications the experimenter says "you are free to go at any time" twice. - The harm suffered was too great and permanent for some of the subjects.

Problems with Food Environment Study

Term: - There was no real random assignment: groups could have come in families and have influenced each other, danger of a field experiment. - There were multiple independent variables (plates, glasses, food organization...), so that it is not possible to tell which ones had an effect: variables confound each other. - The sample size was small - No control condition: can't tell if the bigger plates drove consumption up or smaller plate drove consumption down - Second group might have been hungrier than the first - No operational definitions: we don't know how the dependent variable was measured.

Group

Term: 2 or more people who interact and are interdependent in their needs and goals. Characterized by a common purpose and bilateral influence. People join groups in order to accomplish bigger objectives, because they are driven by basic motives, or to define themselves through specific social norms.

Conformity

Term: A change in one's behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. /!\ Can be good in ambiguous situations: adjusting to the group norm can end up with closer results.

Validity

Term: Ability of a test to measure what it is supposed to measure and to predict what it is supposed to predict. Internal validity corresponds to whether control and experimental conditions were identical except for the independent variable. Solved through random assignment: differences are distributed evenly as each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to either condition. External validity is the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and people. Need to aim for psychological realism: are psyc process triggered during experiment identical to those that would be triggered in real-life situations? More likely if the results are assumed to be universal.

Negative Acknowledgment

Term: Acknowledging something negative in your domain prepares your audience for negative reactions and attenuates them. Proof: given obscure text, either with preface "this text is confusing" or without it. Results: People given the preface rated the paragraph as clearer. Australian accent prefaced -> less shocking Student great except GPA, acknowledged -> Better reception. /!\ Doesn't work under cognitive load, in which case people take acknowledgement as fact and view the text as more complicated.

Actor-Observer Difference

Term: Actors tend to attribute behavior to situational causes, and actors attribute it to internal reasons. Thus there is a clear perceptual difference between actor and perceiver. Fun: when people shown videos of their past selves, they start attributing their behavior to internal traits. Problem: We only see people in a limited # of situations, and our presence ellicits behavior from people: we are the situation for others.

Emotion Decoding Limitations

Term: Affect blends (= display of two expressions simultaneously due to mixed reaction) make it harder to decode facial expressions. Also, culture and context matter.

Maximizers vs Satificers Across Groups

Term: Among college samples, we tend to find more maximizers; in older populations, we find more satisficers. In a couple, the only bad choice is to have 2 maximizers.

Process Loss

Term: Any aspect of group interaction that inhibits problem-solving. Could be that people don't look for the most knowledgeable member, that the best element is sensitive to normative social influence, or that there are communication problems within the group.

Naive Realism

Term: Belief that we see the world precisely as it is. Leads us to assume that others will share our views. Consequence: when meeting opponent, the task changes from one of prediction to one of attribution. Think that people are biased by ideology or self-interest / lazy to process info correctly / think others missed the facts. Main problem: People exclude themselves from the biased scheme, which leads to the wrong scheme: I am right and everyone is wrong vs we all have different construals of the world that surrounds us.

Pluralistic Ignorance

Term: Caveat of informational social influence: in ambiguous situations, due to contagion, people rely on others' interpretations, with are often not more accurate. Can lead to inaction.

Milgram Study Channel Factors

Term: Channel factors are factors in a situation that enable you to translate intention into action. In Milgram's study, there was no red button that could stop the machine, the teacher was kept busy at all times (no stable definition of the situation, increases informational influence), and told by the experimenter to continue. Also, no confederate to first protest nor doubt from the experimenter. Only channel factor: screams at 150V, which marked a peak in disobedience. ex of valid channel factor: religious revival - "if you've been saved, just stand up", people are under conformity pressure and have an easy exit, to stand up.

Evidence for False Consensus Effect

Term: Charged for contravention that didn't happen. Would you pay or go to court? Vast majority of subjects who answered they would pay also predicted that most people would do the same thing. + Same results when people were asked to walk around with ugly signs / give their preference between 60's and 80's music.

Institutional Review Board

Term: Committe with one scientist, one non-scientist and one person not affiliated with the instutition that determines whether the ethical guidelines are met by any given experiment.

Social Dilemma

Term: Conflict in which the most beneficial option for an individual will, if chosen by most, have harmful effects on everyone. Ex: online book, available for free download by those in need iff more than 75% pay.

Problem of Cross-Cultural Research

Term: Cross-cultural researchers are at the risk of imposing western viewpoints to cultures that might understand independent and dependent variable in different ways. Example: anonymous chat about college life would be irrelevant to other populations; some IQ tests emphasize on language skills.

Display Rules

Term: Culturally determined rules about which non-verbal behavior are appropriate to display. In Japanese culture, norms lead people to cover negative emotions with laughter; in individualistic cultures, shame and emotional displays are discouraged, and womeb=n are more encouraged to smile.

Origin of Defectors

Term: Defectors might be driven by greed, or simply distrust the other side. Evidence: (Kelley) Detectors thought everyone was a defector, and cooperators started cooperating and only defected if the other player started defecting (= in defector case, similar to self-fulfilling prophecy).

Propaganda

Term: Deliberate attempt to manipulate mass attitudes to advance a cause. Uses informational influence (through posters and demonstrations), normative influence (everyone is being watched, must display public compliance), and to a certain extent prejudice (ex: nazis, antisemitism had existed for a long time).

Positive Conformity Examples

Term: During the USA civil rights movement, nonviolent protests were key to ending the segregation. Activists remained stoic when attacked, which led to a general commitment to nonviolen protests through conformity.

Demand Characteristics

Term: Elements of an experimental situation that might cause a participant to perceive the situation in a certain way or become aware of the purpose of the study and thus bias the participant to behave in a certain way, and in so doing, distort results. In order to avoid risks, can use double-blind experiment: both the subject and the experimenter are unaware of the conditions. Evidence for experimenter bias: language facilitators who shape the response of the disabled person unconsciously if they hear the question as well. Proof: heard different question, answers corresponded to what they had heard, not what the disabled person had heard.

Metaphorical Automatic Thinking

Term: Even sensorial inputs can prime certain schemas. - Clean smell encourages trust and willingness to help - Heavier clipboard makes people give more consideration to the issue - holding hot cup of coffee makes people think others are warmer, and vice-versa -

Deception Experiment

Term: Experiment that involves misleading participants about the true purpose of the study; ùust be followed by a debriefing including real goal and what transpired from the experiment.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

Term: First asking for a large request which will probably be declined, then should agree later to a smaller request because of reciprocity and the fact that the task will seem less daunting. Also, guilt is one of the reasons, but only if subjects don't have to confront the "victim". ex: ask for volunteering at juvenile prison for 2 years, then take kids for a trip to the zoo. 50% said yes vs 17% control.

Prisoner's Dilemma

Term: Game theory model in which 2 players can at each round either confess of defect. If both defect, no one makes money; if both confess, both make 40 cents; if one defects and the other confesses, the defector gets 80 cents and the confessor loses 40 cents. Then, best play for one round: defect, either gain 80 cents or lose nothing. Best tactic long term: first confess (show willingness to cooperate), then at every turn play the option chosen by adversary at previous turn. Most common behavior: people defect, no one makes money. + Fun: symbols of chinese culture before game increased coop., and vice-versa with american culture. + 2 individuals are more likely to cooperate than 2 groups.

Zero-sum Games

Term: Games in which one player's loss corresponds to another player's victory. As opposed to non-zero sum games, in which both players could win concurrently.

Foot-in-the-Door Techinique

Term: Getting people to agree first to a small request makes them more likely to agree to a 2nd, larger one. ex: car sticker then huge yard sign: 76% success vs 17% in control. Reason: self-perception (People assume their personality dictates this behavior). /!\ The second request must be different from the first one; also, this study shows compliance, not conformity.

Low Ball Technique

Term: Getting people to agree to a small request then increase requirements makes them more likely to ultimately accept the larger requets than if they were directly asked the latter. ex: first agree to use a room, then told only available at 7 am: more agreement than if told 7 am condition at the beginning.

Normative Social Influence

Term: Going along with others in order to be liked and accepted. Results in public compliance with the group's beliefs and behavior but not necessarily private acceptance. ex: polar plunges, started as charity events then became virals among adolescents.

Nonsocial Groups

Term: Groups in which people do not interact with each other, although their performance is affected by the presence of other people.

Group Polarization

Term: Groups tend to end up with more extreme views than individuals. Reason: all members add persuasive arguments which make others reascertain their views. Also, individuals adopt the position of the group but detach themselves by going slightly further, in order to appear as a "good member".

Nonverbal Communication

Term: How people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. Help us express emotions, attitudes and personality. Limitations: Have only been studied in indiciduals, as opposed to real situations.

Social Cognition

Term: How people select, interpret, remember and use social information to make judgements and decisions. Exists in two kinds: automatic thinking is quick and automatic, and controlled thinking is effortful and deliberate.

Hot-Hand Illusion

Term: Illustration of the representativeness heuristic. Illusion that when a player starts hitting, he can't miss. But shooting records have shown that two successive throws are independent and have a 50% chance of being hits at the professional level. /!\ There may be a hot hand for lay players, since learning could have an effect.

Social Norms

Term: Implicit rules for acceptable behavior, values and beliefs. Those who do not conform are perceived as different and deviant, and ultimately rejected.

Milgram Study Other Participants Influence

Term: In presence of another confederate who followed the rule, 90% of the subjects went to the end of the board. With multiple confederates, if one of them stopped, subjects were much more likely to stop. When several experimenters, if one of them said the experiment should stop, most subjects stopped. Thus violence is not a product of human nature, but rather of skillful disposition of a legitimate authority.

Social Faciliation

Term: In the presence of others, people tend to do better at simple tasks and worse at complex, novel tasks. Reason: could be arousal, which improves performance of easy tasks but makes complex tasks harder; or could be distraction of others, which ultimatey is similar. Also could be due to evaluation apprehension. Fun: even favorite TV characters count as mere presence and can alter performance.

Base Rate Info.

Term: Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population. Problem: people prefer to rely on the rep. heuristic rather than on the base rate info, even when evidence is insufficient. ex: surfer in NY college, laid-back -> assume from California whereas frequency of California people very low.

Perceptual Salience

Term: Key cause for FAE. Usually, situational causes are almost invisible, and even if they can be perceived, construals are purely internal. Then, all that appears to the observer is the behavior of the person, which leads to a tendency to overestimate dispositional factors.

Maximizers vs Satificers

Term: Maximizers try to find the absolute best option, while satificers stop looking as long as their standard threshold is met (however high it is). Assessement: given 13 items, then check whether most items answered as maximizer or satificer. Most predictive item: If you are satisfied with a song on the radio, would you turn to another station anyway? + Being a maximizer is positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated with happiness.

Defense of Hot Hand Illusion

Term: Maybe only a few players have a hot-hand, or the hot-hand effect doesn't last for long, or the defense gets tougher to compensate. But no evidence for any of these, & tested with free throws to disprove last claim.

Gender, Culture and Social Loafing

Term: Men tend to engage in social loafing more than women because women tend to rank higher in relational interdependence (= tendency to care about personal relationships with other individuals). Western cultures engage in social loafing more than asian cultures because asians have an interdependent view of the self.

Availability Heuristic

Term: Mental heuristic whereby people base a judgement on the ease with which they can bring somthing to mind. Problem: Sometimes, examples that come to mind are not typical of the overall picture. ex: letter k, more common as first in a word or third? Vacation in Middle Eastern country, more likely to die in car accident or terrorist attack? + Often, the media is the cause of this inacurrate impression: changes how often we think events are likely to happen.

Representativeness Heuristic

Term: Mental shortcut by which people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case. Problem: people encounter logical issues as they value the rep. heuristic over basic probablity. ex: die, 4 green faces and 2 red. Given non-representative sample of length 5 and more representative sample of length 6 that simply balanced the former. Although it is logically impossible, people think that the length 6 sequence is more probable. Reason: In an indepedent series of coin tosses, any sequence is as likely as the other, and chance includes streaks.

Judgemental Heuristics

Term: Mental shortcuts that people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently. Usually functional but can be wrong. Occur in situations in which either no schema applies or multiple schemas are confounded.

Schemas

Term: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world. Influences the info people notice, what they think about and what they remember, especially in ambiguous situations. Encompasses knowledge about people, ourselves and specific events.

Milgram Study from Conformity to Obedience

Term: Milgram originally wanted to replicate Ash's line judgement sutyd with something really at stake. Decided to have subjects distribute shocks in the presence of other confederates who would do it as well. Needed control condition (subject alone), with experimenter to tell subject to shock. Expected less than 1% conformityn, got amazing results, switched project from conformity to obedience.

Milgram Study Victim / Experimenter Distance

Term: Milgram varied the distance to both victim (other room, same room, need for physical contact, through glass window) and experimenter (standing next to the subject, by telephone, through tape recording). Results: the closer the subject is to the victim, and the farther away the experimenter is, the less likely is the subject to pursue the experiment.

Boomerang Effect

Term: Must be aware of both below-average and above-average audience when diffusing social influence message. Ex: Post announcement students only drink X cups: all those below might increase their consumption.

Interjudge Reliability

Term: Necessary verification in observational study. The level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data; by showing that two or more judges independently come up with the same observations, researchers ensure that the observations are not the subjective, distorted impressions of one individual.

P-Value

Term: Number that tells us how likely it is that a given result occured by chance, not because of the independent variable. Need p < 0.05 for the experiment to be significant.

Limits of Observational Method

Term: Observational studies don't allow a researcher to establish correlations between one variable and another. Furthermore, ceratin kinds of behavior are hard to observe.

Selection Bias

Term: Occurs when the subjects used for the study are not representative of the target population

Group Diversity

Term: Often low in groups due to attractiveness to similar profiles and bias in selecting similar people. BUT higher diversity is correlated with improved performance, despite momentary threat to cohesiveness and morale.

Rational Inference

Term: One of the reasons for reactive devaluation: the same proposal coming from the opposite side of the conflict rather than from one's own will be immediately downgraded. Thus, the same object is construed as a function of authorship. Evidence: Israeli-Palestinian study: same peace proposals submitted by either israeli authors or palestinian authors have different receptions, effect observed for both pro-israeli and neutrals. BUT when asked about significance of militarization, authorship only affected pro-israeli, not neutrals.

Leadership Criteria

Term: Only three personality traits correlate with leadership effectiveness: height, family and number of books published. There are two types of leaders: transactional, progresses through clear, short-term goals and rewards, and transformational, operating on common, long-term goals. /!\ The best leaders combine both transactional and tranformational attitudes.

Correlational Studies - Surveys

Term: People are asked questions about their attitudes and behavior. Allows us to see relationships between variables that are hard to observe, and provides us with samples that are representative segments of the population. Random sampling is essential; example: literary digest, gave wrong presidential prediction despite 2 million readers because most of the latter were well-off. Also, self-reports are often inaccurate.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Term: People can make their schemas come true by the way they treat other people. Process: form an impression about the world, then act accordingly to this impression, which in turn makes the targets react to the behavior, so that the original impression is confirmed. ex: prisoner's dilema, IQ study, actor-observer difference.

Gender, Culture and Leadership

Term: People expect leaders to have agentic traits, but women are often seen as communal. However, difference vanishes with time. + Women expected to be better at crisis management, so put at riskier position. Cultures vary in their perception of leadership, but agree on need for charisma and being team oriented.

Two-Step Attribution Process

Term: People first make an automatic internal attribution, then adjust their original internal attirbution by thinking about possible situational reasons (similar to anchoring, type of belief perseverance). When distracted or preoccupied, people often skip the second step, because it requires effort and conscious attention. People go through both steps when they are motivated to be accurate or suspicious of the target. Evidence: Given people abortion essay, told author was given stance . Participants either under low or high cognitive load. Results: gap much more flagrant in high load condition.

Construal Motive - The Need to Feel Good

Term: People have a strong need to maintain high self-esteem (= evaluation of one's own competency and goodness); they will contrue a situation to put themselves in the best possible light. Consequence: people justify their actions rather than learn from experience.

Construal Motive - The Need to be Accurate

Term: People try to view the world as accurately as possible. However, it is usually impossible to gather all the information in advance, so they use heuristics that sometimes result in cognitive errors.

False Consensus Effect

Term: People who make a choice estimate that choice to be more common that do people who make the opposite choice. Leads to overconfidence.

Injunctive Norms

Term: People's perception of what behaviors are approved or disapproved by others; as opposed to descriptive norms, people's perception of the way others actually behave in a given situation.

Social Psyc. vs Personality Psyc.

Term: Personality psychology tries to explain behavior through individual variations, whereas social psyc focuses on social influence. It thus produces universal results, and it necessary in cases such as the Jonestown mass suicide in which we couldn't attribute the disaster to the mental illness of every single villager.

Ethical Dilemma

Term: Psychologists try ot create realistic, engaging situations, but they often face conflicts with ethical guidelines that prescribe the need to avoid stress, discomfort or unpleasantness. Resolution: If subject gives informed consent to participate in an experiment in complete awareness of its nature, the problem is solved. BUT sometimes can't reveal the purpose of the experiment in advance, would harm the results.

Milgram Study Need for Authority

Term: Put a common man with subject instead of experimenter. Either the man suggests the idea, and no one accepts, or the man decides to give the shocks himself: subjects physically restrain him.

Milgram Study Gender Variation

Term: Put women as teachers, expected them to be more compassionate but also expected more obedience. Results: women produced the exact same level of obedience.

Social Cognitive Neuroscience

Term: Putting emotion back into neuroscience. Has shown that we think about certain groups the way we look at objects: people who are low in warmth and low in competence (drug addicts, homeless people...) -> disgust. High W, High C -> Pride; High W, low C -> pity; High C, Low W -> envy.

Group Cohesiveness

Term: Qualities of a group that biend members together. The mroe cohesive the group, the more retention rate and enthusiasm. BUT if tackling a task that requires cooperation, cohesiveness can get in the way of optimal performance.

Replication

Term: Reiteration of a study with different subjects and in different conditions. Often, results vary, so that researchers use meta-analysis (= statistical technique that averages the results of multiple studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable).

Informational Social Influence

Term: Relying on other people as a source of information to guide our behavior, in order to choose an appropriate course of action. Happens with both public compliance and private acceptance.

Integrative Solution

Term: Resolution of negotiation in which both sides conceed the most on issues that are unimportant to them. Problem: people often distrust the opponents and their proposals. Then, could solve issue by introducing a mediator or changing the communication stylel (face-to-face better than e-mail).

Anchoring Effect

Term: The tendency to be influenced by a suggested reference point, pulling our response toward that point. That is, even if clearly wrong, this number will still serve as an unconscious suggestion. ex: length of Mississippi river, first told 500 miles or 5000 miles. Results: people estimate 1000 or 2000 in average respectively. Estimates given by people for the sequence 1*2*...*9 were much lower than were those given for the sequence 9*8*...*2*1, although the result is identical.

Hindsight Bias

Term: The tendency to exagerrate the likelihood that one might ahve predicted something before it occured. Reason: people might look for justifications of the outcome following its discovery, which gives them the false impression that it is intuitive.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Term: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors. Usually gives people the reassuring feeling that it could never happen to them. Leads them to blame the individual when the situation was very storng, and to become less aware of their own susceptibility to situational factors. /!\ Fundamental refers to the fundamental attribution question (internal vs external), not to the fact that it is fundamental to human beings.

Reactance

Term: The tendency to react in the opposite direction to a persuasive message when compliance might place limits on personal freedom. = Wanting something you can't have.

Construals

Term: The way in which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world. We are often unable to perceive the differences in others' views of the world, and convinced that we see things as they really are (= naïve realism).

Subliminal Messages Impact

Term: Traditional subliminal advertisements don't do much, but might work if people already have a similar thought in mind (ex: thirsty at movie theater). + Proof of existence: People given list of words, either related to senior citizens or neutral. When former, walked slower down the hallway.

Scientific Method

Term: Two step process to produce systematic answers to empirical questions. First emit a hypothesis, then implement a well-designed experiment to verify whether a specific situation would result in an expected outcome. The experiment must use random assignment and have have a control condition (existence of an independent variable)

First Impressions

Term: Usally conveyed through verbal and nonverbal communication, thye take 100ms to form. ex: subjects detected gays and political candidates more likely to win in a very short time. Often accompanied by thin-slicing (= drawing conclusions about personality based on a very brief sample of behavior).

Overconfidence Barrier

Term: We often have greater confidence in our judgements than we should. Resolution: Can get people to consider the possibility that they are wrong, or teach people statistical and methodological reasoning principles.

Analytic vs Holistic Thinking Style

Term: Western cultures tend to focus on the properties of objects and less on the situation (= analytic), whereas Eastern cultures focus on the whole picture, the objects, the situation and their relationship (= holistic). Evidence: - Measured that people from western cultures showed more brain activity when asked to analyse a picture holistically and the opposite was true in eastern cultures. Meaning we rely on our culturally typical method of thinking when we interpret a scene. - When shown cartoon with central character smiling and others around him sad, situation only affected Asian responses. Reason: East Asian cities contain more objects that compete for people's attention, thus encouraging the development of holistic thinking.

Ash Study With Incentives

Term: When Ash's study was replicated with incentives, if people didn't know the answer, showed more conformity, and if did know the answer, showed less conformity. That is, the more ambiguous the answer, the higher the conformity rate.

Ash Study Evidence for Normative Pressures

Term: When alone, participants in Ash's study gave 98% of right answers. Thus, evidence that even among strangers, people don't want to look peculiar or foolish and thus develop public compliance without private acceptance.

Groupthink

Term: When group cohesiveness is more important than realistic consideration of the facts, there is a significant risk of process loss. More likely with directive leaders and an isolation from contrary opinions. Resolution: making subgroups, being welcome to outside opinions, and the leader should remain impartial.

Biased Assimilation vs Hostile Media

Term: When subjects deal with primary sources of evidence, they use it to strengthen their views. BUT when the presentation is made by someone, all they worry about is that the presenter might put too much creed to the other side.

Automatic Decision Making

Term: When you need to integrate a lot of complex info in order to make a choice, that the choice does not follow a fixed set of rules, and that you have the conscious goal in mind, the best way ot go is to undergo a period of distraction.

Yale Story - Evidence of Situationism

Term: Yale student shouts at house master concerning halloween incident. Received hatred messages from all over the internet. Professor himself says "no one should be judged after 3 seconds on the internet".

Counterfactual Thinking

Term; The process of mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been. The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome (= close-call), the stronger the emotional reaction to it. Proof: bronze medalists are often happier than silver medalists. Problems: Can result in rumination and depression.

Gestalt Psychology

Theory: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Stresses the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds.

Practice Impact on Culture

Theory: (Berry) Hunting/fishing cultures are expected to be individualistic and agricultural cultures are predicted to be collectivistic. Confirmed by Ash's experiment.

Universality of Facial Expressions

Theory: (Darwin) Primary facial expressions (fear, disgust, anger, sadness, happiness, surprise) are univeral, meaning that they are species specific rather than culture speciifc. All humans encode emotion in the same way and can decode it with the same accuracy. Evidence: fear, reaction to danger, enhances perception, and disgust, reaction to toxic stimulus, decreases perception.

Covariation Model

Theory: (Kelley) To form attribution, we examine multiple behaviors from different times and situations. Examines 3 key types of variations: - Consensus info: the extent to which other people behave in the same way toward the sale stimulus as the actor does; - Distinctiveness info: the extent to which one particular actor behavies in the same way in response to different stimuli; - Consistency info: the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances.

Social Impact Theory

Theory: (Latané) The likelihood that subjects will repond to normative social influence depends on 3 factors: 1 - The group's importance to the subject (strength) 2 - The group's immediacy (proximity in space-time) 3 - The group's size /!\ Group size only matters up to 3 individuals. When group's importance to us is high, we tend to avoid conflict and make worse decisions on important issues. When there are no alliesin the group, conformity rates are higher.

Evolutionary Psychology

Theory: Attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time. Hypotheses are unfortunately often just speculations, but they can generate novel ideas that could then be tested.

Correspondent Inference Theory

Theory: In order to determine whether it is wise to make an internal attribution about a person's behavior, people should first think about the situational variable. Then, the fewer the unique (noncommon) effects associated with this variable, the more certain the internal attribution should be. That is, choices between equivalent options allow us to make internal attributions. Additionally, the lower the expectancies and social desirability, the more likely it is that an internal attribution will be valid. That is, choosing prison when given choice between Penn and prison has very low expectancies, so likely to be internal cause.

Contingency Theory

Theory: Leadership theory that states that in order to maximize work group performance, leaders must be matched to the situation that best fits their leadership style. If the leader is task-oriented, best in high and low control situations. If relationship-oriented, best in moderate control situations.

System 1 and System 2

Theory: Our thoughts can be directed by one of two systems, depending on the nature of the situation. In routine situations, we tend to go by instinct, which explains why we are more afraid of dying by a terrorist accident (= fear). But when stakes are high or when the situation is novel, we rely on system 2 (= controlled thinking as opposed to automatic thinking). /!\ There is no guarantee that system 2 is always right. Also, people tend to prefer rapid decisions over right decisions, which is problematic.

Attribution Theory

Theory: People make one of two attributions: Internal attributions, related to the person, or external attributions, related to the situation. Then, these attributions shape perception.

Experimental Method

Theory: Random assignement of participants to different conditions that are identical except for the independant variable, which is supposed to have a causal effect. Allows for causal inference.

Correlational Method

Theory: Technique whereby two variables are systematically measured and the relationship bewteen them is assessed. Makes use of the correlation coefficient, statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable from the other. But correlation does not imply causation: can't check for third variable or directionality.

Observational Method

Theory: The technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements of their behavior.

Situationism

Theory: The view that environmental conditions influence people's behavior as much as or more than their personal dispositions do. Mostly relies on the power of context, which tends to be ignored. ex: Gugenheim famous because round building in the middle of rectangular buildings; Words from politicians taken out of context cause complaints of candidates; Seeing someone parked over the line could be due to previous circumstances, but people lack attributional charity.

Subjectivism

Theory: The way you interpret the situation matters. When we look at the world, we want to create meaning; we have trouble being aware of the variation of construals. Ex: miss south-carolina stressed by audience, loses speech ability; woman laughs at Susan Boyle's performance: people don't acknowledge that they were probably doing the same.

Behaviorism

Theory: To understand human behavior, one only needs to consider the reinforcing properties of the environment. That is, through careful reinforcement and punishment, anyone can be shaped into a specific person. Problem: doesn't take construals into account.